#31 Aladdin

Title: Aladdin

Release Date: November 11th, 1992

Voice Cast: Scott Weinger, Robin Williams, Jonathan Freeman, Linda Larkin, Gilbert Gottfried

Recap: Set in the Middle East, a young thief named Aladdin has dreams of living the rich life in the royal palace. In contrast, Princess Jasmine wishes to escape the palace life along so that she may choose her own husband (much to the frustration of her father, the sultan). When Jasmine does flee the palace, she meets Aladdin, and the two share a spark. However, their time is interrupted when guards are sent to capture Aladdin by the sultan's traitorous advisor, Jafar. Jafar uses Aladdin to fetch a magic lamp, but as he is leading the boy to die, Aladdin's monkey Abu manages to steal the lamp. Inside the lamp is the Genie, who promises to grant Aladdin any three wishes (with some exceptions). Aladdin uses these wishes to get closer to Jasmine, but Jafar still aims to stop him.

Review: If any one of my reviews would sharply polarize my opinions with most viewers, it'd be this one. Not beating around the bush: I don't care for Aladdin that much. But I'll tell you why, and I hope in some ways I can make points that you'll understand.

Then again, I only have one main point. Aladdin tries too hard. It tries too hard in almost every aspect. The result of trying too hard, if you didn't know, is cliché. For example, it tries too hard to be funny. Don't get me wrong, Robin Williams is a comic genius, and he was just fine in this movie. But every other joke fell flat in my opinion. I only laughed once throughout the whole movie.

The drama and romance is bland, too. This is in part due to a lackluter set-up to the plot, which is everything to a Disney movie. And again to the clichés: "Some day, Abu, things are gonna change", "It's mine! It's all mine!", etc. I've got nothing else to say but... come on.

So Renaissance animation and sound effects, couldn't save this one. Sorry.

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